[ExI] google translator

Mike Dougherty msd001 at gmail.com
Tue Jan 18 00:40:18 UTC 2011


2011/1/17 spike <spike66 at att.net>:
> I have been anticipating this technology for a long time:
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/17/google-translate-app-android-review/
>
> Comments please?  Has anyone here tried this application?  May we have a few
> samples of translations from English to German to French to English?  Then
> English to French to German to English?  How fast is it?  If this works as
> well as I expect, do you suppose it will put an end to universities
> requiring foreign languages?  That exercise seems like mostly a waste of
> classroom time which could be used drilling science and math, ja?
>

Drilling?  no please, let's agree that's a waste of time too.

Until we get teachers who make science and math as fun and interesting
as you know it can be then there is no way to make it palatable to
your "proles."  Until that happens, we'll continue to be behind we we
could be.

I had a Philosophy of Mind (& artificial intelligence) class tonight.
During the typical introductions, one of my classmates expressed some
resentment that "computers" were "taking jobs away from people."  I
was horrified that anyone could seriously propose this viewpoint.  It
will be an interesting semester to see if I can persuade him to see
the other side of his argument.

Tomorrow night I will be learning Spanish (again).  My last professor
made a point to explain that translation services can never be as good
as humans with language.  I almost laughed his lack of awareness for
machine translation (but it's not funny after all).  My guess is that
your several language translation is at least as good as a first-year
language class' two-language translation.  Though we're told that a
word-for-word "translation" is not the thing to do; instead interpret
the meaning of expressions.  I agree: with language conversion
applications the language barrier falls to a minor inconvenience.




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